Historical region

The region probably formed part of the “Land of Punt” known to the ancient Egyptians. Between the 7th and the 12th century ce, cities such as Seylac and Berbera on the Gulf of Aden and Marka, Baraawe, and Mogadishu along the Indian Ocean served as trading ports in a region that the Arab Islamic world called bilad al-Barbar (“country of the Barbar”), Barbar (also Berber, Barbaroi) being a name for the Somali people of the region based on the descriptions of the inhabitants of the area found in the Greek document Periplus Maris Erythraei (1st century ce; “Navigation of the Erythrean [i.e., Red] Sea”). Those medieval cities exported gums and resins, ostrich feathers, and slaves and waged war against the Christian Ethiopians of the interior. The Somali, who occupied those areas alongside other groups, had begun adopting Islam in the 7th century, and the religion became firmly entrenched in the centuries that followed. The occupants of the cities organized themselves into sultanates such as Adal, centred at Seylac, and Ajuran, centred at Mogadishu.

When the European nations began to partition Africa among themselves in the late 19th century, France already possessed (from 1862) a coaling station at Obock near the mouth of the Red Sea, other areas of the north coast were occupied by Egypt, and southern Somaliland recognized the overlordship of the sultan of Zanzibar. By the end of the 1880s, France had expanded its holdings to the area of present Djibouti, Britain had established a protectorate over the north coast opposite its base at Aden, and Italy controlled the remainder of the country. In the north the Muslim leader Sayyid Maxamed Cabdulle Xasan began a war against the British in 1899 and maintained his hold over the interior until his death in 1920. The Italians acquired Jubaland in the extreme south after World War I, and in 1936 they united their Somali possessions with Ethiopia to form Italian East Africa. The British won control of the Italian zone during World War II. In 1960 British and Italian Somaliland were united to form the independent Republic of Somalia. French Somaliland (renamed the French Territory of the Afars and Issas in 1967) became independent as the Republic of Djibouti in 1977.

Following the civil war that began in Somalia in the 1980s and the subsequent overthrow of that country’s government in 1991, a government opposition group, the Somali National Movement, secured the region comprising the former British Somaliland. In May 1991 they announced that the 1960 federation was no longer valid and declared their region to be an independent state, henceforth to be known as the Republic of Somaliland. Though not internationally recognized, Somaliland experienced relative stability—a sharp contrast to the civil war that continued to engulf Somalia. Taking advantage of that stability, the Somaliland government was able to rebuild much of the region’s infrastructure, which had been damaged by years of warfare.

Since the late 1990s there has been tension between Somaliland and Puntland (an area in the northeastern part of Somalia, which declared itself an autonomous region in 1998). Each disputed the other’s claim to the Sanaag and Sool regions, and armed confrontations have periodically ensued.

In 2001, 10 years after breaking away from Somalia, Somaliland still was not internationally recognized as an independent country. Undeterred, the government held a referendum that year, the results of which clearly showed that Somaliland’s inhabitants supported the region’s claim of independence. As it had in the past, in 2003 the Somaliland government rejected invitations to participate in peace talks aimed at reunifying Somalia, maintaining that its independent status precluded it from being a party to such discussions.

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